Reminds me in the t-shirt: "don't drink and root"
this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
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it could be worse: rm -rv ~ /etc
I fucking hate using rm for these very reasons.
There's another program called "trash-cli" that gives you a trash command instead of going straight to deletion.
I'm not sure why more distros don't include it by default, or why more tutorials don't mention it.
Next time:
ls ~/etc
rm -rv !$
This is also dangerous because you could run the second command by accident later when browsing command history
Or press alt+. to paste final argument of previous command
Genuinely curious⦠why using root for operations like these?
To feel the thrill
π
Reminds me of when I had a rogue ~ direction sitting in my own home directory (probably from a badly written script). Three seconds into rm -rf ~ and me wondering why it was taking so long to complete, I CTRL+C, reboot, and pray.
Alas, it was a reinstall for me that day (good excuse to distro hop, anyway). Really glad I don't mount my personal NAS folder in my home directory anymore, holy shit.
Bruh
OOOOOOOOOOOF!!
One trick I use, because I'm SUPER paranoid about this, is to mv things I intend to delete to /tmp, or make /tmp/trash or something.
That way, I can move it back if I have a "WHAT HAVE I DONE!?" moment, or it just deletes itself upon reboot.
Just get a cli trash tool and alias it to rm. Arch wiki
That's certainly something you can do! I would personally follow the recommendation against aliasing rm though, either just using the trash tool's auto complete or a different alias altogether.
Reason being as someone mentioned below: You don't want to give yourself a false sense of security or complacency with such a dangerous command, especially if you use multiple systems.
I liken it to someone starting to handle weapons more carelessly because the one they have at home is "never loaded." Better safe than sorry.
Lol we should have "rules of rm safety":
- Assume rm is always sudo unless proven otherwise.
- (EDIT)Finger should be off the Enter key until you are certain you are ready to delete.
- Never point rm at something you aren't willing to permanently destroy.
- Always be aware of your target directory, and what is recursively behind it!
Yeah, there's no need to alias it. Trash-cli comes with its own trash command.
I think this is the best approach. I've created a short alias for my trash tool and also aliased rm to do nothing except print a warning. This way you train yourself to avoid using it. And if I really need it for some reason I can just type \rm.
If you want to train yourself even more effectively you can also alias rm to run sl instead :)
i always do "read;rm ./file" which gives me a second to confirm and also makes it so i don't accidentally execute it out of my bash history with control-r
Also stealing this. What an awesome tip
Hey that's a pretty good idea. I'm stealing that.
After being bitten by rm a few times, the impulse rises to alias the rm command so that it does an
βrm -iβor, better yet, to replace the rm command with a program that moves the files to be deleted to a special hidden directory, such as~/.deleted. These tricks lull innocent users into a false sense of security.
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I am new to Linux and just getting somewhat comfortable as my daily driver, very proud of myself that I got the joke pretty quickly :)
Sudo apt-get install /etc
Ok speaking of this, where do a distroβs config and boot scripts even come from? Are they in a package? Like on Debian so the .debs have metadata that can add cron jobs and such?
Yup
Yeah, same thing like with unclosed bottles, cup too close to the table edge, etc.: Accidents that can hapen, will happen.
Better name them something else in your user dir.
And yes, painful experience.
Thank god you used -rv and not -rf πππ
Reusing names of critical system directories in subdirectories in your home dir.
I agree with this take, don't wanna blame the victim but there's a lesson to be learned.
except if you read the accompanying text they already stated the issue by accidentally unpacking an archive to their user directory that was intended for the root directory. that's how they got an etc dir in their user directory in the first place
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Be happy that you didn't remeber the ~ and put a space between it and etcπ.
Ohohoho man did you ever fuck up. I did that once too. I can't remember how I fixed it. I think I had to reinstall the whole OS
That's what tools like trash-cli are for.
HAH rookie, I once forgot the . before the ./
Nvidia once did it in their install script
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Ahh, the rites of passage!
So good to see that, even in 2026, Unix Haters' Handbook's part on rm is still valid. See page 59 of the pdf
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βJust a little off the top pleaseβ
I've had a combination of tab complete and filename spaces lead to things like rm Some\ Common\ Prefix * at least three times. Instant regret. I've now got a pretty good intuitive reflex around this type of thing. You eventually get enough callouses.
Things like these are right of passage on Linux :)
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